We're continually looking for ways to improve our users' experiences with our software. One of the recent improvements is solving the challenge of administrative access to Immerseme websites through touch devices. More and more users are accessing the web through mobile devices like iPhones, Blackberry touch screen models, or even iPads. 

We have recently rolled out a small improvement that enables your touch device to access the element drop-down menus in admin view. On a laptop or desktop computer, these menus are accessed by hovering over the menu bar, which isn't possible on a touch device. So, we've changed the behavior on touch devices so that touching the element name will open the drop down menu.

This new feature will allow touch devices to:

• Access the "manage posts" page on blog elements
• Access the "manage entries" page on form elements
• Access the "settings" pages for all elements
• Use the "move up" and "move down" buttons to move elements within a region
• Use the "delete" button to delete an element

This update is just a small step in our continued work toward improving the experience on mobile devices. We hope you enjoy it!

When we consult and talk about "Branding" to our clients we do so in the context of what we call "Big B" and "small B" branding or the difference between "Branding" and "branding."

Branding refers to the emotional feeling as a result in the complete experience and interaction with that organization. It encompasses everything from how your receptionist answers your phone, the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of your facilities, the professionalism and excellence of your work product and on and on and on.

branding refers to the visual representation through your communication with your audience. Your logo, design style, photographic styling, font choice, tagline, et al.

branding is all about how you represent your Branding.

Once your Branding is defined and you define your branding the next step is to extend that brand and build equity through remaining consistently consistent in how you represent your brand identity.

A Case Study - Karen McConaughey Photography

Karen McConaughey Photography (KMP) is an Immerseme client who we helped define both the Brand and brand. KMP is all about capturing authentic memories through photography. You can read how Karen presents her intangible Brand at KarenMPhotos.com.

One of the recent projects we did for Karen was to extend her brand across multiple communication platforms. First we obviously began with her brand where we extended it to her primary website. Our recent addition was integrating social networking via her facebook pages as well as integrating her twitter feed. This is also the primary location where Karen utilizes solid Search Engine Optimization practices.

As a photographer, Karen wants to illustrate what she's doing along with large format client photographs. While ImmerseEdit CMS incorporates blogging tools, RSS feeds and more in to the CMS, it is not a blogging platform like Blogger, Typepad, or Wordpress.

Karen chose to use Wordpress as her blogging platform of choice where we extended her brand by customizing it to match her main website.

Finally, Karen utilizes Twitter and Facebook as social networking tools to communicate and build her online community. So her Twitter page got a facelift to match her brand as well. 

All of these small details serve to create a consistent brand experience for Karen McConaughey Photography that helps reinforce her Brand.

How can we help you?

One of the questions we get asked every now and then is to see a portfolio of our design work, which we're certainly obliged to do. As we interview one another (yes, we interview prospective clients as much as we're being interviewed) we tend to ask what the purpose of that inquiry is. Generally speaking the prospective client is looking to see our design chops, which leads to an interesting discussion.

You see, We believe each organization has a brand, whether it's been defined visually or not. As such, each of our designs are unique to ourclients. Your business or organization isn't cookie cutter, and neither are our designs.

This was so visually evident as I was celebrating a few recent client launches here on our blog.

Mission Church in Helotes, TX is a new (and very successful) church plant in the San Antonio area. The church and leadership tend to be more rough around the edges (and I mean that in a positive way!), gritty and generally true to life... and their design and brand tell that story.  

First Baptist Church in Spartanburg, SC is a church with 170 years of tradition and history. The DNA of FBS is unique to their local context and much different from Mission Church, as reflected in their design.

Now, truth be told, we want all of our clients to represent their brands and uniqueness in their design to truly build a brand identity (and then market the fire of that brand through social media, SEO, et al!), but we also realize that in today's economy, not everyone is ready to take the proverbial plunge of a professionally designed website. 

For those we've created a few Templates (that are easily customizable) in the hopes that this is a step in the right direction and that ultimately we'll get to help each organization we partner with realize their uniqueness! Now, you won't find our Templates in our menu structure here at Immerseme.com, but if you're looking for a low cost option to use ImmerseEdit CMS, this may be an option for you (but hopefully a short term option!).